DENNIS STRATTON: Discusses IRON MAIDEN's Debut.

Issue #4 of the newly launched UK based Rock Candy Magazine features an exclusive candid interview with former IRON MAIDEN guitarist Dennis Stratton in which he reveals how the band's debut could have ended up sounding like QUEEN.

Exclusive Issue # 4 Dennis Stratton article preview:

Guitarist Dennis Stratton has told Rock Candy Magazine that the first Iron Maiden album could easily have been a much more sophisticated recording than the warts ‘n’ all, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal classic we all know and love. And Stratton also reveals that it was only the band’s manager, Rod Smallwood, who put a stop to the plan.

Released in April of 1980, ‘Iron Maiden’ became a benchmark recording for a new style of metal that was harder, leaner and faster than the music being made by the stadium filling rockers of the ‘70s. Songs like ‘Phantom Of The Opera’, ‘Running Free’ and the title track have since achieved legendary status. But guitarist Stratton, now performing with Lionheart, told Rock Candy that it could all have been very different.

“I took ‘Phantom of The Opera’, which was always a great song at its core, and added a load of harmony guitars and falsetto vocals to our basic recording,” he explains. “The engineer helped me layer the sounds, adding track after track, and when we played it back it sounded like Queen. I thought it was fantastic. But when we were listening back to the track Rod Smallwood came up behind me in the control room. I didn’t know he was there and at the end of the song he said, ‘You can get rid of all that. It sounds like fucking Queen.’ So it never made the cut. I’d still love to do a big, massive production of that song one day. I know it would be great.”

Stratton was a member of Maiden for less than a year, but he nonetheless made a vital contribution to that classic first album.

“Rod didn’t like the music I was listening to,” says Stratton. “I’d be in my hotel room on tour listening to some David Coverdale or a bit of Eagles or some George Benson and Rod would go potty. He said, ‘If anyone heard you listening to that kind of music…’ But how can you listen to Motörhead 24 hours a day? You’d be deaf!”

Read the whole of this revealing article in Issue 4 of Rock Candy Mag, available for purchase online at the following location:

Rock Candy Mag is a 100-page, full-colour bi-monthly rock mag created in the UK but available worldwide. It covers the sights, sounds and smells from the greatest era ever in hard rock music, the ’70s and ’80s. Put together by respected UK rock journalists Derek Oliver, Howard Johnson and Malcolm Dome, all frontline writers for the legendary Kerrang! magazine in the golden era, Rock Candy Mag is available in print format with a digital add-on for everybody who buys a print edition.